Though a capable dramatic actress, petite and perky blonde Meg Ryan has had her greatest successes in sparkling romantic comedies of the late '80s through the '90s. Connecticut-born but raised in New York City, she studied journalism at New York University. Needing money to pay for her night classes, Ryan, a casting agent's daughter, thought she'd try her hand at acting after her mother got her a role in Rich and Famous (1981). She got a lucky break and was cast as Betsy Stewart on the daily soap opera As the World Turns between 1982 and 1984, putting her college courses on hold. After leaving, she toured Europe and then returned to school. Ryan went back to television to star in the short-lived series Amy and the Angel (1981). The following year she starred in another quickly-cancelled series, One of the Boys, and yet another in 1983, taking time in between to co-star in Amityville 3-D (1983). Her film career did not really get started until she played the wife of doomed flyboy Anthony Edwards in the smash hit Top Gun (1986); though it was a relatively small role, it attracted the attention of Steven Spielberg who starred her as a journalist in Innerspace (1987) opposite Dennis Quaid, who in 1991 became her husband. In 1988, the two would star together in the thriller DOA. Ryan appeared in two more films without attracting too much notice and then landed the lead opposite Billy Crystal in Rob Reiner's When Harry Met Sally (1989). Perhaps the definitive romantic comedy of the late '80s, the film was a monster hit and Ryan, in part due to the key scene wherein she convincingly fakes an orgasm in a roadside diner, but also because she was able to bring depth and realism to a character that might easily have been another genre stereotype. Another comedy followed and then Ryan showed her dramatic mettle playing Jim Morrison's tragic-drug-addicted wife in The Doors (1991). In 1993, she appeared in her second most famous role as that of a lonely woman who falls in love with a lonely man she's never met in the gooey romantic comedy Sleepless in Seattle (1993). She tried her hand at costume drama in Restoration (1994). In 1997, she added decidedly dark undertones to her normally perky persona in the comedy Addicted to Love.